ABSTRACT
In contemporary popular representations, it amalgamates complex tables: the legacies of the past, and the fact well put by Stephen Howe that allows ‘to talk of human difference in terms of “ethnic groups”, rather than “races”’ and, also, that ‘race is not a biologically, genetically, anthropologically or sociologically meaningful concept’. Referring to André Lalande’s Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, Canguilhem emphasises a French curiosity: ‘Anomaly is a substantive with no corresponding adjective at present; abnormal on the other hand, is an adjective with no substantive, so that [French] usage has coupled them, making abnormal the adjective of anomaly’. Inscribed in the archeology of its own history, the conceptual debate on normal and abnormal is more complicated and confused than one might think. Sass’s analysis on the prevalence of schizophrenia from the cross-cultural dimension is an excellent summary. Competent, brief and clear, it indicates the main points of ambiguities.
